Electronic Value Exchange: Origins of the VISA Electronic Payment System (History of Computing)

by David L . Stearns (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  2011

  $145.04

  Electronic Value Exchange examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the VISA system from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; presents a historical narrative based on research gathered from personal documents and interviews with key actors; investigates, for the first time, both the technological and social infrastructures necessary for the VISA system to operate; supplies a detailed case study, highlighting the mutual shaping of technology and social relations, and the influence that earlier information processing practices have on the way firms adopt computers and telecommunications; examines how gateways in transactional networks can reinforce or undermine established social boundaries, and reviews the establishment of trust in new payment devices.